He is a middle-man. He provides flexibility in the medallion scheme (offering scheme that are not provided by the government), take financial risk ( he put the

He is a middle-man. He provides flexibility in the medallion scheme (offering scheme that are not provided by the government), take financial risk ( he put the money on the table and need to find some driver ) and so ensure more taxi are on the street than if he wasn't there. You can see all the middle-men in any business as useless if "XYZ" was better. Now in the case of that guy in particular, he is just becoming obsolete, replaced by a better medallion system and a modern/leaner middleman: Uber. He disappears in the name of progress so there is nothing sad about that, but that does not mean he was never useful. Also, I guess somebody will point out that if he wasn't adding flexibility to the medallion system, Government would have been forced to fix it. That's wishful thinking: there is nothing that the government could not provide but Uber does, despite that it does not move at all in that direction. Government is not pressured by the market like people and businesses, this guy is greasing the part where government policies meet people reality.